PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. . 731 



The probabilities are millions to oue in its favor. The only 

 other way in which the opponents to the theory explain the 

 facts upon which it is foimdecl, is the same by which in the early 

 days of geological science, timid theologians and others explained 

 the appearances which indicated so strongly that certain geologi- 

 cal strata had been found at the bottom of the sea. They said it 

 was just as easy for the Almighty to create these strata, with the 

 enclosed fossils, where and as they were, as at the bottom of the 

 sea. So the sun and planets may have been created where and as 

 they are, but this does not explain why they all rotate and 

 revolve nearly in one plane in one direction, nor why their dis- 

 tances and velocities conform so exactly to the nebular theory of 

 origin. Adjourned. 



American Institute Polytechnic Association, } 



January 24, 1867. y 



Prof. S. D. Tillman, presiding ; T. D. Stetson, Esq., Secretary. 



The chairman opened the proceedings with the usual budget on 

 science and art, as follows: 



Coast Survey. 

 The French government have made a survey of the Brazilian 

 coasts, between the La Plata and the Amazon rivers, in which 

 there were taken 178,000 angles and 106,000 soundings. 



Plate Glass. 

 Broadway can no longer boast of the size of its window-panes. 

 One, covering an alcove in the State House at Boston, containing 

 the State battle-flags, measures twelve feet four inches by seven 

 feet seven. 



Telegraphic. 

 A late telegram to California was the President's messsge, which 

 was published in the San Francisco evening papers the same day 

 it was sent to Congress. The new world still leads the old in 

 telegraphy. America now has 90,000 miles of telegraph lines ; 

 Europe 60,000 ; India 3,000. 



Meteor Spectra. 

 Mr. Alexander Hershel has recently succeeded in obtaining a 

 spectrum of a bright meteor ; also the spectra of some of the 



